This will be about 30% of the playzone of the campaign area I'm building. I'm opening the floor for comments and recommendations.
Actually, let me enter a digressive non sequitor. I'll run it as PbP, and having never done that method have questions. Which forum should I use for those?
In rough overview, I have decided Chattanooga will be a feral city. There are a few things (timing not yet determined) which contributed to this situation.
A lot of pressure was created by simple history. The River route of the trail of tears - the Tennessee River - runs through it. It, as with many other places, was the site of a couple of a couple of major battles in the US Civil War, but unlike most such sites the city made almost a fetish of remembering the events and those dead. Being remembered, the dead lingered.
Another factor that hurt the city was the toxic waste. About 75 miles upriver is a major coal (among other things) waste dump. It broke open and has done bad things downstream.
The third factor was the nuclear powerplant on the northwest corner (Soddy Daisy). Oh, it didn't burst open. It didn't get closed as well as it should, however, and, well, it seems it leaks a little. Or at least that's what everyone says to explain the background radiation and the peculiar critters.
What finished the town, however, was the bursting of the Chickamauga dam. It's not a huge dam by anyone's measure - it only had a 23 foot drop. But when it broke... before the dam was built, Chattanooga was the nation's flood capital. Every two or three years the Tennessee would overflow its banks in that region. It's a massive floodplain.
It was so regular, in fact, that downtown Chattanooga was raised back in the late 1800s. Dirt was brought in and piled around and (usually) in existing buildings, raising all of downtown by a full story. It turns out there are lots and lots of holes in the ground, many of them connecting -- a veritable underground city.
So when the dam broke open, Chattanooga again became the nation's flood capital. It pretty much wiped out over 3/4 of the so-called permanent structures of the city.
So, why should Atlantans (from where my players will come, and where they will more frequently play) care about Chattanooga? In a word, logistics. It is, after all, why civilization (such as it is) persists. Chattanooga still exists because it is the intersection point for dozens of smugglers routes, and as such has become something of a smuggler's tradepoint.
The lay of the land - the ridges of the Appalachian folds/mountains - make ground movement difficult. The broad valley cut by the Tennessee creates a natural movement channel. Barge traffic and road traffic use this route from the northeastern US toward New Orleans. In this vicinity, however, is one of the natural breaks in the ridgelines that allows traffic to "turn" both northwest toward the nation's center AND southeast toward Atlanta. This natural lay of the land is a reason the city was, at one time, a major railway hub. The ridges also influence natural wind-flow, giving low-travelling LTA a corridor with regular and relatively low winds with which to contend. The natural breaks in the ridges are as useful for LTAs as they were for rails and roads.
Finally, and less well known, is the TGA (Tennessee Georgia Alabama) cave system. Chattanooga lies almost in the center of a cave network that stretches for literally hundreds of miles. Though the region doesn't have the best-known entrances, it does have several that are well-established and stable.
Players who go to Chattanooga will have three quasi-urban locales in which to play: Downtown, Missionary Ridge, and Outlook Mountain. For the most part (with occasional high-ground exceptions) most of the rest of the area is shantytowns and stilt-houses on a frequently-flooded plain. Swampy spots and streams abound. You're more likely to encounter a water moccasin than a Gabriel hound, though metahumans are still the most dangerous critter. The one remaining high ground that's north and northwest of the city is Red Bank/Signal Mountain, and as already noted people think the area should be glowing even if it doesn't.
Some corp ties to start:
*Aztechnology. [Pilgrim's pride moved its headquarters from Chattanooga to Greeley in the late 2000s. It is owned by a Brazilian company. One of PP's largest processing plants is in Chattanooga, and it is today one of the city's largest employers.]
*DocWagon. The largest employment group in Chattanooga is medical and medical insurance. No, not kidding. Due to real-world connections I can justify this Chattanooga group was a major funding source for DocWagon. They may not be The People, but they're darn well part of the top layer.
*There is a small but decent state university in downtown. It is a significant producer of engineers (civil, mech, elect, and nuclear) and computer people within the state. It's not Vanderbilt, but it's not nothing either.
*SaederKrupp. In the highlands to the northeast, in 2012, is VW's newest manufacturing plant. VW owns a /lot/ of the surrounding land, and is adding a lot of second-tier corporate offices.
*Shaw. An A, possibly AA corporation. Part of the Berkshire-Hathaway group before that was broken up and sold, Shaw makes floors. Carpets, mainly, but tile and linoleum and wood slats and any other surface. And, by the way, wall and ceiling surfaces. Shaw is mostly based in Dalton-Calhoun aka Shaw-town, the separate almost-urban sprawl between Chattanooga and Atlanta. Even back in 2010's they managed to make floors/walls/ceilings that worked well with network lifestyles. (I have no doubt they use awakened processes as well.)
Criminal elements. Undeveloped at this time - I'm combing VICE but have no firm feelings beyond looking at the smugglers and black marketeers.
Comments? Additions?
